Healing is Remembering the God-Created Self

. . . on undoing both external and internal resistance

If we want to end conflict and know peace then we have to learn what we are in truth. We have to know our own self as God created us. It is the opposite of selfishness because its only aim is to undo the self upon which the guilt and fear which give rise to the external world of conflict rest. We don't say it is possible or impossible to do this. We just give ourselves to the process and see what happens.

There is no other activism, no other healing, and no other work. And only you and I can do it.

The world opposes this kind of knowledge. In truth, we oppose it. So that is the ground with which our interior journey begins: external opposition and internal resistance.

EXTERNAL OPPOSITION TO INNER PEACE

The world was made in order that we might forget who and what we are (e.g., T-5.III.11:1, T-12.III.7:5). It has no other purpose. It is filled with gadgets, dietary and exercise fads, wars and starving children, poverty and riches, endless gossip about celebrities and gurus. Bodies break or get sick and then die.

We can't take our eyes off it.

The precise form of this external conflict varies but its fundamental existence - its content - never does. It is uniquely suited to its task: holding our attention on what is outside of us, convincing us that what is external is real and causative, and thus keeping us from ever looking within to consider another, a better, possibility.

We need to see it for what it is: an inarticulate chaos that hypnotizes us, rendering us moment-by-moment incapable of asking serious questions and staying with the answers, however complicated and painful they seem to be.

The way to undo the world - or to begin to undo it - is to give attention to it in a non-judgmental way. That is what it means to look at something with the Holy Spirit (T-5.III.11:6), and that is what it means to practice forgiveness. We give attention to what is while simultaneously suspending our egoic habit of judgment. The reason we need the Holy Spirit is because the ego - with which we are so identified - will not consent to look at itself or its seeming effects in a thoughtful critical way (T-13.IX.8:1-2). We need help. If we didn't, A Course in Miracles wouldn't exist.

So we give attention to what is happening at the level of the body and the world. We take note of the way our senses respond to the material world and the way our thoughts interact with the data collected through the senses. We see the way an observer/observed paradigm arises and we note too our addiction to that paradigm. We begin to perceive - dimly at first but with increasingly clarity - that it is all constructed. It is all made up. It is real only because we believe it is real (T-2.VII.5:5-6).

That is the gift of the miracle: it establishes only that we are dreaming and can choose another dream - happier, lovelier, more just (T-28.II.4:2-3). In that light, what we are is no longer a consequence or effect of what we perceive externally - the wars, the gadgets, the movies and restaurants. We are still within the observer/observed framework but we are aware of the framework and so our identification with it is loosened. It is no longer synonymous with reality. We can question it.

INTERNAL RESISTANCE

So that is the first opposition we encounter - the belief the world is real and valuable and that we can work out some kind of salvation within it on terms of our choosing. When we see it finally as an illusory distraction from true salvation, then we are able at last to turn inward in a helpful way, to begin in earnest the work of self-discovery. And that is when we encounter the second opposition, which is our own resistance. We learn that we don't actually want to know who we are because we don't want to learn that it is our choice to be separated from God (M-5.II.1;7). We certainly don't want the responsibility that awareness entails.

Internal resistance can be insidious. The ego is happy to retrench while we indulge in spirituality, saying that the world is not real, practicing the daily lesson of A Course in Miracles, whatever. The ego is not undone just because we stop whining about the weather or arguing on the internet. It just waits and when the time is right, it whispers that we were wrong about the world, and mistaken in our spiritual practice, and that there are better alternatives that it will give us in its own time.

It is a grim but necessary step in the healing process to realize the way we are using our ACIM practice as a defense against the very awakening it offers.

The truth is, we prefer our spiritual comfort zones. We don't want to change. We are too scared. We’re scared of what we are going to find beyond the ego's prattle and machinations. What if there is nothing? What if there is an angry, punitive God? What if we're not smart enough or spiritually agile enough to handle it, whatever it is?

It is my understanding - in no small part because it is my experience - that one can linger a long time at in the domain of resistance and the good intentions that cloud it. A long time. You feel like you’ve made some nontrivial progress and you want to settle. Isn’t it enough?

But remember Peter, John and James on the mountain where Jesus was transfigured in the company of Moses and Elijah. It is such a radiant spectacle that Peter suggests they set up tents - that they make the experience a permanent arrangement. But Jesus says no. And so they leave the mountain and go on to Jerusalem and eventually to Calvary and the cross. In a way, that story teaches us that we have to keep going even when we want to stop, even when it seems reasonable to stop. The end is sure but we still have to enact the journey.

And more than that, the truth is that once we have seen through the facade of the world - once we have learned how futile its means and ends are - there are only two options: going forward despite our fear, or giving up.

The roads this world can offer seem to be quite large in number, but the time must come when everyone begins to see how like they are to one another. Men have died on seeing this, because they saw no way except the pathways offered by the world. And learning they led nowhere, lost their hope . . . It is true indeed there is no choice at all in the world (T-31.IV.3:3 - 5, 8).

A Course in Miracles offers us a pathway that is in the world but not of the world. It teaches us that the peace of God permeates every relationship of which our "lives" seem to be comprised, enlightening all of them at once without exception. But we have to participate. And our participation takes the form of consenting to have the obstacles we place before peace be undone.

. . . the peace that already lies deeply within must first expand, and flow across the obstacles you placed before it. This you will do, for nothing undertaken with the Holy Spirit remains unfinished (T-19.IV.2:2-3).

So we encounter resistance and trace it back to its source - which is the fear of God (T-19.IV.D.3:4) - and there it is undone in the same way that every other obstruction and obstacle was undone. We raise it into the light of awareness - we give it attention with the Holy Spirit - and like snow in April it dissolves as if it had never existed.

The desire to get rid of peace and drive the Holy Spirit from you fades in the presence of the quiet recognition that you love Him. The exaltation of the body is given up in favor of the spirit, which you love as you could never love the body (T-19.IV.D.5:3-4).

The Holy Spirit's is the Voice for Love and when we finally allow its dulcet tones to reach our ears - let those who have ears hear! - internal fear and guilt are naturally and irrevocably undone. We don't end our resistance; the Holy Spirit ends it for us when we ask sincerely and humbly that He do so and then let Him do it.

RADICAL HEALING

We make this healing, this undoing, a process - a journey, a curriculum - and that is okay (it is more than okay, really) but in truth it happens in an instant. In truth, it doesn't even happen. Rather, we remember that it already has happened. There is no middle ground between the ego and spirit (T-4.II.8:6, 8). What we are in truth remains constant and is not affected by ongoing cycles of projection and denial.

It does not matter if you think you are in earth or Heaven. What your Father wills of you can never change. The truth in you remains as radiant as a star, as pure as light, as innocent as love itself (T-31.VI.7:2-4).

The most radical thing we can do in the context of separation is remember ourselves as God created us. To do so, we will have to let go of the world and let go of the ego. Only after they are consensually undone do we see that they were the same problem perceived from different vantage points.

Thus, though the world is not real (W-pI.132.4:2-3) it remains the site in which we see the work of salvation done in concert with our brothers and sisters. Although the egoic self is not real, it remains the vehicle through which the Holy Spirit restores our awareness of God and Heaven (T-4.I.2:9-10, T-5.II.2:5, 3:7). As the course teaches in Lessons 79 and 80, we have to solve problems where they seem to be.

Healing in this way is radical because it reaches the very root of the problem but also because the world does not bless off on it. The world and the ego want us to be lonely and unsatisfied, ever seeking outside what can never complete the interior puzzle. Everything the ego and the world offer is temporary and subject to change (T-31.V.14:1, 15.1-2). It is hard to see this and harder yet to decline to participate in it.

Yet beyond the captivating drama of our shared suffering is a stillness that is creative and nurturing. We find it together not by seeking but by co-creating with it the very peace that is our inheritance. Salvation is collaborative. The memory of what we are in truth returns to minds that are ready - in still, quiet and non-dramatic ways - to welcome that truth. We have no other function.

Love,
Sean